HELP!!! CPU cooler died!

Last night I was woken up by a horrible clicking and scraping sound. It sounded like someone put nails into a blender and put it on "crush ice". It was coming from the CPU cooler in my gaming PC (CoolerMaster V6). I looked at the fan and it was rattling horribly and was stopping every now and then as if it was catching something. I shut off the PC. There was nothing catching the fan. I tried spinning the fan with my finger. It was hard to move, like it was seized or something. How would I remove the heatsink without pulling off my processor or something else with it? Or how could I put a new fan onto the heatsink?

Edit: Also, if I got a new cooler, would I need to put on new thermal paste?

Thanks! ANY HELP is GREATLY APPRECIATED!

Sounds like the electrical tape killed it.

You could try taking it back to MicroCenter..

Since your heatsink was just recently put back on, you don't need to worry about pulling the CPU out of the socket.

Yes you need to apply new thermal paste. Remove the old stuff from the CPU die with a little rubbing alcohol and a cotton ball.

voyagerfan99 said:

Since your heatsink was just recently put back on, you don't need to worry about pulling the CPU out of the socket.

Yes you need to apply new thermal paste. Remove the old stuff from the CPU die with a little rubbing alcohol and a cotton ball.

Click to expand...

It was never removed... I taped the fan while it was still attached.

Well whatever. Just remove it and replace it with a new one anyway.

Fixed. Thank you

This morning the noise returned again. The fan was seized totally this time. I went to MicroCenter and bought these:
http://www.microcenter.com/product/312376/120mm_blue_led_fan_-_2-in-1_value_pack
and put them onto my CPU cooler. Before installing them I blew out all the dust with canned air. I accidentally created a huge dust cloud in my office and everything had dust on it now. However, the issue is fixed and all is good now!

The VCR King said:

This morning the noise returned again. The fan was seized totally this time. I went to MicroCenter and bought these:
http://www.microcenter.com/product/312376/120mm_blue_led_fan_-_2-in-1_value_pack
and put them onto my CPU cooler. Before installing them I blew out all the dust with canned air. I accidentally created a huge dust cloud in my office and everything had dust on it now. However, the issue is fixed and all is good now!

Click to expand...

Dude, if the fan is failing on your CPU cooler, replace the entire cooler, don't just put case fans on top of it.

Geoff said:

Dude, if the fan is failing on your CPU cooler, replace the entire cooler, don't just put case fans on top of it.

Click to expand...

There's nothing wrong with replacing just the fan on a CPU cooler. A lot of people do it. Definitely nothing wrong as long as it is the same size and has the correct CFM for the airflow.

CorruptHawkeyez said:

There's nothing wrong with replacing just the fan on a CPU cooler. A lot of people do it. Definitely nothing wrong as long as it is the same size and has the correct CFM for the airflow.

Click to expand...

Sounds like he didn't replace it, but he put it on top of the failed CPU cooler fan.

CorruptHawkeyez said:

There's nothing wrong with replacing just the fan on a CPU cooler. A lot of people do it. Definitely nothing wrong as long as it is the same size and has the correct CFM for the airflow.

Click to expand...

Geoff said:

Sounds like he didn't replace it, but he put it on top of the failed CPU cooler fan.

Click to expand...

Yeah that's a Cooler Master V6GT. He didn't explicitly make it sound like he removed the old fan(s) before strapping those on. If he didn't, that's going to choke the hell out of the cooler.

Well, lets just hope he 'replaced' the bad fan(s) and didn't strap the new on top of the old one.